


Warmth of the Air we Breathe

by Resamille



Series: That Which Is Left Behind [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Makeouts, Marriage Proposal, Mentions of temporary character death, Post-Canon, elemental powers, it's not that angsty I swear, mentions of injury, road trip au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 13:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10595118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resamille/pseuds/Resamille
Summary: Somehow, somehow, Keith finds himself here, driving back to the place he had intended to never see again all on Lance's request. Because when can he ever say no to the boy he's absolutely in love with.The war is over.Earth is safe.And yet, going back to the Garrison feels like going into battle.Still, they're together. They've made it this far.





	

The moment lingers.

Warm, warm: Keith feels it in his chest, in the sunlight splaying over his leg through the side window, in the heat of the leather under his fingertips as he drives. It's the blast of air conditioning combating the Texas summer, it's the countless billboards advertising some landmark or an old Buckee's, and it's the quiet sounds of existence as Lance sits next to him, feet propped up on the dashboard and long legs bent to fit against his body.

Keith glances sideways, letting his gaze linger for a moment on the lazy sprawl of Lance's figure across the passenger seat. He's staring out the window, gaze only occasionally flicking from the rapidly setting sun over the desert to the empty road before them, an anxious countdown to their destination. After everything, he reads Lance more easily than the poems he memorized growing up. Lance's shirt, still a little loose on his lanky frame despite the new layers of muscle, has ridden up to reveal his hip, to show off a scar or two and the bruises of Keith's fingers from the night before.

Lance's head is tipped against the glass, lips pressed tightly together in uncharacteristic silence. It doesn't escape Keith how each breath seems to drag a little slower, either with exhaustion or the weight of their journey, and he notices the soft tap of Lance's fingers against his thigh, the gentle shake as a result of experiencing war, the tremor from weapons, from explosions, from fear.

They both have it, the memories ingrained into their muscles, but while Keith keeps his hands tight around the steering wheel, knuckles paling with the force, Lance lets the shake overtake him. It's in the low-light downtimes such as these that it hits him hardest, thoughts of what they've seen—what they've _done—_ echo brutally through Lance's body until he's trembling all over, a soft vibration of nerves where he otherwise seems to be lounging comfortably.

And yet, he's still perfectly steady with his hands on the controls of a ship, or fingers curled around the trigger of a gun.

Keith pulls over, kills the engine, and the two of them are bathed in the soft glow from the dashboard for a moment before that too fades into the dim. Lance turns to him, tilting his head towards him—he catches the glint of Lance's gaze, a quiet shine reflecting the green digital numbers on the radio. Keith turns in his seat, leg propped against the console between them, and breathes in the musk of leather and dust, the faint scent of oranges permanently soaked into the rear seats of the pickup after Lance's family took trips the orange groves near their home.

Keith faintly misses the thrill of riding his speeder, and the truck is nothing in comparison, but they had been staying with Lance's family, and Lance's mother had insisted they take the truck when Lance had quietly announced that morning that he and Keith needed to leave for a while. He remembers the night before, Lance curled against his chest with the sheets draped over their bodies, slick with sweat, when his lover had whispered to his skin that he need to go _back_ , and Keith knew.

“Keith?” Lance asks, voice gravelly with disuse.

The response is silence. Keith's never been good with words, but he reaches over and draws Lance's fingers between his own, curling with practiced precision into each other. He feels the weight of worlds in Lance's palm, the weight of lives saved with his hands, and the measure of lives taken. Lance is a friend, a lover, a brother. Not a soldier.

And yet they were both plunged into roles they never thought they would bear, far too young to know what to do with the responsibility of fighting a war, much less winning it.

When the team returned, they split, for a time, with promises to keep in touch, and yet somehow... Things hadn't gone as planned. Shiro disappeared for a while, coming to terms with himself and his experience on a planet that once left him to die. Keith and Lance hid in south Texas, close to coast, where the beach and Lance's family waited with wet cheeks and open arms, and Keith was adopted seamlessly into the bustling home. Hunk lingered for a while, and then went to work on his own things, rejoin his own family, with the promise to check in with Lance as often as possible. And Pidge—

Well.

Keith takes in a deep breath, runs his thumb over Lance's knuckles. On his right hand, rough under Keith's fingertips, the joints are scarred from a time they got ambushed in the middle of the night, and Lance flat-out decked a Galra soldier in full armor without anything to protect his own skin. At the end of it all, Lance had thrown him a bloody grin, teeth stained by a split lip, as Keith wrapped Lance's wounded hand a bit too tight, fingers shaking with worry, and then wrapped his arms around Lance in an equally too-tight hug.

Lance squeezes his fingers, just enough to bring Keith back to the present. They've both learned each others' tells—when they're going down the inevitable pathway of the past that ends only in the pain of... Well, everything. They've learned to bring each other back, to remind the other of being alive and peace and a world without destruction or terror.

It's hard, but they can do it. They get by.

Yet, here they are, still looking for something.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Keith asks, and his voice sounds foreign to his own ears, too soft but too unfeeling at the same time, even as worry clenches his gut.

Lance is quiet, but he turns in his seat to better face Keith. “I... I have to.”

“You don't owe them anything, Lance,” Keith says, a hint of finality coloring his tone. Because this is something that's loomed over both of them for a while, ever since they returned from space, but the difference is that Keith wants to _move on_ , and Lance's thoughts linger.

“You don't have to come with me if you don't want to,” Lance whispers back, because moonlit conversations demand quiet voices. It's a fact they learned through countless shared moments like this, either staring into the castle's starmap or watching those stars in person through the window in Lance's bedroom.

“You're not going alone,” Keith states.

“Then we're going together,” Lance counters.

Keith lets out a huff. His free hand drags through his bangs, shorter than they've been in a while thanks to Lance's older sister. Meanwhile, Lance is letting his hair get just a bit too long, curling at the nape of his neck. Keith won't admit it, still, but he likes it longer—likes to tug his fingers through it.

It's soft.

But maybe, it's also one last act of defiance towards the place they left behind. The place that impossibly is their intended destination.

Because the Garrison abandoned them, left them out to rot, or let them rot within its own walls, and somehow Keith and Lance still managed to fly without the military classifications to defend their ability. Fighter pilot? Cargo pilot?

Try _defenders of the universe_.

But it eats at Lance, Keith knows. That something calls them back. It eats at him, too, if he's honest. They should be above it all, by now, and yet—something draws them there. Their intent is not to prove anything, as far as Keith knows. He has no dreams of taunting Iverson with the fact a dropout did far more than the most distinguished of graduates, with the exception of Shiro, but part of him needs to see it. Part of him needs to see where he came from, what started it all, and look back and see how far he's come, no matter how rocky the path has been.

He has a feeling Lance feels the same.

It's a rare moment, but one of the few times Keith just doesn't want to confront this. He'd prefer to just keep driving. To run and run until there's nothing left but him and Lance and the desert sun.

Lance tugs gently at his hand. “Come on. Unless you wanna keep driving?”

Keith shakes his head slowly, but it takes him a minute to find his voice. “Let's—um... I—”

“Do you wanna just crash?” Lance offers.

“Yeah. Yeah. Few hours, at least. Can we... in the back?”

“It'll be cramped. Unless you mean the truck bed?”

“Bed. We have blankets.”

Lance shrugs, but goes for the door handle anyway, uncurling himself as he steps into the night air, still heavy with heat but cooling slightly without the sun's unrelenting blaze. Keith follows suit, and together they tug a couple of blankets from the rear seat and lay them out on in the truck bed, rear door flipped down to add some length to the space.

Lance crawls up, lays flat against the blankets. Keith leans against the side of the truck for a moment, head resting on folded arms, as he watches Lance fit his hands behind his head, staring up at the star-littered sky. Unintentionally in-tune, a breath drags through both of them, a little sad and earth-shattering in the endless silence.

Lance's gaze flicks over to him, a soft smirk playing on his lips, even though the light doesn't reach his eyes. “Like what you see?”

“Yeah,” Keith hums, and leaves Lance's deep rumble of a chuckle behind him in order to lean through the driver's side door and turn on the radio. It's late enough that there isn't much on anymore, but Keith fiddles with the dials until some country station starts playing, and he decides that's good enough. They won't actually listen to it anyway, but Lance needs the noise in order to sleep. Even the castle ship had a gentle thrum of white noise, but the void of space has _nothing_. And nights like these sometimes echo a little too close to the vast unknown, the likes of which Keith and Lance have come far closer to actually knowing than anyone else.

And that knowledge is terrifying.

When Keith returns, Lance has his eyes closed. He's breathing deep enough that if Keith didn't know him, he might be fooled into thinking Lance had already fallen asleep. He pulls himself up into the truck bed, crawling forward to open the window in the center of rear windshield to let the music through, and then settles back on the hard surface next to Lance, close enough that his arm brushes against Lance's side.

“Oh man,” Keith grumbles, trying to find a comfortable spot on the ridges of the truck bed. “You're going to bitch so much tomorrow about sleeping here.”

“Mm,” Lance acknowledges, and then: “Hey, Keith.”

“Yeah?” Keith finally fits his shoulder blades between two ribs of hard plastic, though softened by blankets. His fingers search for a moment against the fabric of Lance's jeans, before he slips two into one of the belt loops. It's a simple movement, and leaves Keith's wrist bent a little awkwardly, but he needs something to hold onto.

“What do you think Katie is up to?”

Right. Katie. Not Pidge. Not the Pidge that Keith knew. Not anymore.

The final mission. They all knew, going in, that some of them might not make it out alive, but no one had thought—

Keith, with his rash determination; or Lance with his self-sacrificing protective nature; or Shiro, who as leader, always went in first—one of them, maybe, they should have died.

But not Pidge.

“She's probably up there rebuilding worlds, somewhere,” Keith replies softly.

The battle won, they'd tiredly regrouped with celebratory cheers, and then waited as Green slowly drew into her hangar battered and weak but moving. They waited. And waited.

And Lance went in.

They heard the cry, absolute anguish, and rushed in after him, only to find Pidge's lifeless gaze, a soft smile on her lips as blood trickled through the wound through her chest, pieces of the Galra ship still lodged in her body from where some shard had stabbed straight through Green's windshield.

“Ah,” Lance breathes. “Yeah. She had planned to trace Altean gene pools right?”

Allura had watched them break, torn by the loss of a team—no, _family—_ member. She followed them into Green, used all the command of her royal standing, barking at them to get out of the way as she pulled Pidge into her arms and poured herself into the smaller frame. Quintessence and magic, flame and power, and Pidge blinked herself into life again, eyes blazing with the glow of Altea, skin burning with fresh markings.

There was a grateful smile on Allura's face as she fell forward. Shiro caught her, cried _no, no, no_ , against her cooling skin, and even though the team was _whole_ again, they all felt it, the way Allura had simultaneously completed and broken them all over again.

“Yeah,” Keith confirms. “Wanted to work on bringing back the race.”

But when Pidge came back, it wasn't just Pidge. This was someone—something new. This was Pidge, enhanced with the power of an ancient race, coupled with Allura's determination and wisdom, all packed into one soul. Pidge was gone, replaced by a chimera made from starlight and princess of Altea and green paladin.

“Well, if she really wanted to, there are easier ways,” Lance huffs, chuckling at his own insinuation.

Keith lets out a soft snort. “This is P—this is Katie we're talking about. I think she'd prefer to work through ten thousand years of DNA than have sex.”

Lance lets out a huff of laughter. In some sense, it's superficial: the instinctual response to a deadpan joke, but underneath the low chuckles timed along to strums of a guitar from the radio, there's the longing of a lost friendship, the guilt Lance bears because, like Keith, thoughts of Katie are always accompanied by _it should have been me_.

Lance shifts, draping his arm across Keith's face because Keith is so close that there's no where else for him to move anyway. He splutters in response, but can't bring himself to actually be mad. Lance smells like sweat and seafoam, like shared moments under soft blankets and home. Keith wipes the taste of deodorant off his lips with the back of his hand while he lifts his head to let Lance's arm slip underneath, and then lays back to commandeer said arm as a pillow.

“We actually have pillows in the truck, you know,” Lance hums softly.

“They were on your side,” Keith replies mildly. “And therefore your problem. You go get them.”

“No way,” Lance hums, voice heavy with sleep, even though they both know it's a long time coming. “They were on your side.”

“Liar. I'm not falling for that. I just got comfortable.”

Lance snorts. “Comfortable is a relative term.”

“I just got relatively comfortable, then.”

“You're on my arm. I can't get up.”

“Who's fault is that?”

“I dunno, maybe the same person who's lying on my arm?”

“You're insufferable.”

“I'm—” Lance breaks off.

Keith reaches up with the arm that's not squished between his and Lance's bodies, searches blindly with his fingertips until they brush over Lance's. Lance latches on instantly, and Keith feels the tremor through his bones.

“We're okay,” Keith whispers, though his voice is directed at the stars, and not the boy next to him.

“I still can't believe we made it,” Lance breathes.

“Me either.” Keith feels the words catch in his throat, as if admitting them is going to somehow jinx it. That somewhere, Zarkon is alive again, planning his revenge. That the worlds they spent so long saving will always be in danger. They were five people—how the hell are they supposed to undo ten thousand years of damage?

But it's over.

And as soon as they finish this trip, it really will be.

They can let it go. They can move on. Have real lives.

“I miss her.”

Keith doesn't know immediately who Lance is talking about, but it doesn't matter. His response is true no matter who of their friends Lance speaks of: Allura? Pidge?

“I know.”

“Did I ever tell you why I hate the silence?”

“I always assumed it was because you weren't used to it. Your house is never quiet.”

Lance lets out a chuckle. “It isn't, is it? Out there, I missed the noise, yeah. But as comforting as it was, I kinda valued the silence. In a family of six, it was a privilege to be able to hear yourself think. But now... It's not because I miss the noise. It's because without it, I keep thinking I'll be able to hear her in my head. It crushes me when I can't.”

 _Oh_ , Keith realizes.

Not Pidge, or Allura.

Lance is talking about Blue.

His heart stutters painfully against his ribs, lost for a moment in a call to the mechanical heartbeat that once paired with his, but now leaves him feeling just a little bit empty. He squeezes Lance's hand, because he doesn't know what to say. Is it consolation that he longs for Red just as strongly? Or does that only make the thought more painful?

“Do you think they miss us, wherever they are now?”

Keith bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough that he lets out a little squeak and has to smooth his tongue over the spot to try and soothe the sting. “I...” he finally says, wishing the stars above him would give him answers. “I don't know.”

“Who am I kidding, there were probably lots of paladins before us, right? We weren't the best. Even Shiro.” Lance lets out a breathless, bitter chuckle.

“But we were the last,” Keith breathes. “That counts for something.”

“Yeah,” Lance says softly, and Keith has a feeling he's talking more to the midnight sky than to Keith. “Yeah, we were the last.”

“I'm going to go get the pillows.”

“Right.”

“We should try to get some sleep after.”

“Right, yeah.”

“You need your beauty sleep if you're going to be presentable at the Garrison tomorrow.”

Lance is shocked into a laugh, too-loud and wild. He presses a shaky kiss to Keith's temple. “Yeah, okay.” He pulls his fingers free from Keith's to swat at his shoulder. “Go on, get going.”

Keith tilts his head up, hair tickling his cheek, as he pushes up towards Lance's waiting lips. A soft kiss, heavy with promise and practice. The stars shine overhead, echoes of ages past and childhood ambitions. They speak like lion's roars, distant but powerful, and Keith misses everything they once had.

But the moment lingers, curled around each other in the back of a dusty pickup, filled with memories of friendship and family, and they're aching, but okay.

One last journey.

 

Keith jolts awake to the sound of something rapping against metal. Next to him, Lance is blearily adjusting to the Texas sun and consciousness, but Keith is instantly snarling, drawing an inhuman growl from somewhere deep inside him, a trick he'd perfected eventually after learning of his Galra heritage.

Their visitor draws back with a startled expression, one hand up, placating, while the other reaches down, down... Their fingers curl around the black metal of a gun, and Keith draws himself back. Not Galra, not an attack.

He's ashamed to admit the number of times he's woken up growling at one of Lance's siblings because they slipped in to wake the two of them for breakfast.

“Sorry to startle you,” says the officer. “Just makin' sure everything's okay.”

“We're fine,” Lance mumbles, yawning. “Just taking a road trip. Sorry to bother you.”

“No car trouble or anything? It's not exactly safe to sleep out in the open like this.”

“We're fine,” Keith grumbles, a little harsher than he intends because he's still swallowing the growl in his throat.

“I know you boys think you're on top of the world at this age, but really, there are bad people out there—”

“Look, Lady,” Keith huffs, tugging a hand through his hair, trying to pull his bangs back from where they stick to his forehead with sweat. “I didn't save the damn universe just to get mugged by some lowlifes in fuck nowhere Texas.”

“Excuse me?”

“What he means,” Lance drawls, planting a soothing hand on Keith's shoulder. “Is that he's grouchy when he just wakes up and he's sorry. Have you ever heard of Voltron?”

They're both pinned with a level stare, bordering on a glare with the way the officer's brows pull together. “The kids' comics? My son reads them.”

Lance laughs, controlled and forced, though only to Keith's ears. “Yeah, like the comics. Well, we were Voltron. Part of it. I think we can handle ourselves out here, really.”

The incredulous expression that blossoms over her face is almost hilarious, except for the fact that it makes Keith's blood boil because this is the reaction they _always_ get. “I'm sorry, kid. I hate to break it to you, but those are just stories.”

“Just stories?” Keith bites out, leaning forward to look down on the officer. “ _Just stories_? Let me tell you something about those _stories_. There's more to it than flying mecha cats and beating up bad guys. There was pain and destruction. There was friendship and family, and we carried the weight of the fucking universe on our shoulders. I will not be talked down to by some ignorant civilian who thinks that they've seen it all when we've seen real _war_. When we've saved worlds. When we've _destroyed them_.”

Keith feels it burn within him, this lingering gift within from Red. He knows he must look manic, with a soft smirk at the way the officer glances warily behind him at Lance, and her hand curls protectively around her gun. But it doesn't matter, because the tickle of fire in his heart leaps, dances along his skin and into the palm of his hand.

“Tell me,” he snarls, as the flame licks greedily towards the air from his fingertips. He drinks in the wide, scared gaze of the officer. Part of him dares her to draw her gun, part of him longs for the fight, because that's what Voltron made him: a soldier, single-minded and deadly. Red left him with nothing more than a gift of destruction, all-consuming and almost too wild to control, just like she was. “Does this look like just a story, now?”

“Keith,” Lance says softly.

That's all it takes to draw him back. He closes his palm, killing the fire flickering in it. He pulls away, sitting back to tilt his head wearily to the sky, eyes closed against the searing sunlight.

“Sorry about that,” he hears Lance say. “Touchy subject. We'll get out of your hair now, alright? We kinda have somewhere to be. Sorry to bother you. Tell your son we hope he enjoys the comics.”

“Um—yeah—okay. S-stay safe.”

Keith hears footsteps retreating from the car, hears the engine of the cruiser start, and then Lance punches him hard in the shoulder.

“You shouldn't have done that,” he scolds, and Keith turns to him, hurt, as he rubs his arm where Lance hit him. Lance picks himself up and drops to the ground, stretching his arms above his head as he works out the kinks in his back.

“The world thinks it's fake, Lance,” Keith counters, the hint of a growl coloring his tone.

Lance pins him with an unamused expression, and yanks harshly on the blankets that Keith is still sitting on. He scoots a bit across the truck bed with the force of the pull, and scowls at Lance while attempting to stand without being toppled by Lance's tugs.

“We sold our stories, Keith. What did you think was going to happen?”

“A little respect would be fucking nice,” Keith hisses, pulling himself up using the roof of the truck while Lance gathers the blankets in his arms.

“Yeah, well the income from those glossed-over kids books is a lot nicer in my opinion,” Lance growls back, head buried in the truck.

Keith hops down, thudding dully on the gravelly ground. He slams the back door of the truck bed closed with a little more force than necessary, because he needs something to get the lingering anger out of his system. Lance sighs softly, and leans his forehead against the car frame for a moment before reeling back from the temperature, rubbing his forehead with a distasteful downturn to his lips.

“We should get going,” Keith says, rubbing tiredness from his gaze with a hand. The heat of the metal resting under other palm burns his skin, and he welcomes it, like the unruly graze of flames when he's just a bit too worked up and his control slips. Sometimes it consumes him, leaves him breathless with power, and the responsibility fades away. But it's always Lance that brings him back, either in the soft touch of ice against his flushed skin, or the gentle reminder in his eyes that Keith is entirely a force to be reckoned with, and with that... He has the ability to hurt people. He can hurt himself. He can hurt Lance.

And then he comes back, slips this rocky reign of control back over his own neck, and forces the flames to die.

But sometimes—sometimes, he needs...

“No,” Lance says, stern. “You need to burn something.”

Keith tilts down, his turn to rest his forehead against the metal. He doesn't pull away. He lets the heat seep through him, simmer in his core like anger and disgust. “Right,” he mumbles, and let's the words fall to the dusty earth under his feet. “What do we have?”

Lance's upper body disappears into the truck again, and Keith straightens to catch glimpses of his wild hair through the open window in the rear windshield. As he makes his way towards Lance, he pauses to stretch up on his tiptoes, closing the window. The radio still plays country softly, filling the air with a stale nostalgia for the night before.

“Find anything?” Keith asks, slipping his fingers over Lance's back where the stretch of his body makes his shirt ride up. The skin is warm under his touch, but somehow impossibly cools him, quelling some of the desire burning through him.

Lance makes a noncommittal noise from where he rummages through the junk thrown in the back of the truck: the blankets and pillows, a couple of rumpled changes of clothes for the both of them, a stuffed animal or two—an inevitable addition to any trip due to the nature of Lance's family. “Not really. Something tells me this is more than an old pizza box kinda time.”

Keith huffs a laugh. “Yeah. It's fine. I'll wait 'til we're back.”

“The last time we put this off, you almost burned down a playground.”

“Almost,” Keith retorts, though he does feel pretty bad about that. Lance had been gone for a couple days, and Keith just couldn't deal as well as he'd thought. “But you're here. It'll be fine.”

“You're right,” Lance says, voice a little breathy as he straightens and turns to Keith. “I'm here. Use me.” He draws Keith's hand from his back, runs his fingertips down Keith's arms, raising goosebumps even in the impossible Texas heat. Lance's hands settle steadily over Keith's, a sure weight to them that Lance only manages in dire moments. It's the deep breathe before pulling the trigger. It's the adrenaline rush of flying.

It's the connection of channeling his lion's parting gift.

“I could hurt you,” Keith breathes, even as he aches to try it, to see Lance beautifully mirrored in ice and flames.

“I know,” Lance says, and presses his forehead to Keith's. “You won't.”

“I—I can't always pull back that quickly.” Keith bites his lip, and the pain sparks need in him.

“I'll be fine,” Lance says, hands sliding up along Keith's wrists and gripping to his forearms. “Come on, Keith.”

“Away from the truck,” Keith says, and lets Lance drag him away from the road, stumbling over dead brush somehow clinging to the parched ground. “Are you sure?”

“Too late,” Lance says, and flashes Keith a toothy grin before his fingers turn icy against Keith's forearms, the cold spreading along their connected skin until it begins creeping up Lance's shoulders, down his sides.

“Dammit, Lance!” Keith cries, willing himself into action far sooner than he expected. He frantically calls on the flames, pulls them like fine threads from his chest with vigor to weave them into something manageable.

For a moment, he fails, and Keith feels everything blaze up around him. Lance's eyes go wide, even as ice spreads across his cheeks, and his soft smile falters into awe. Keith rushes to pull the fire back, even as tendrils of steam curl up around them where Keith's hands burn the ice off of Lance's skin where they're still in contact.

“See?” Lance says, but his voice is cracked, broken, as ice curls around his throat, and Keith begins to panic slightly. He knows Lance can thaw on his own—something they learned very early on when a nightmare set Lance off before Keith could get to him—but it still terrifies Keith the way his gaze goes lifeless under the freeze.

Keith pulls his arms out from Lance's hands, drags his fingers to rest underneath Keith's shirt at the skin on his waist, because if he doesn't keep Lance's hands warm, then he's likely to keep the ice spreading, if for no other reason than to keep Keith on his toes. He runs his own hands over Lance's arms, starting from the back of his wrists, fingers curled carefully around Lance's lanky limbs, traces heat over Lance's shoulders, and revels in the way the steam curls between them, seared away by Keith's fire. It makes him hum with satisfaction, and soothes the heat in his core as Lance gently smooths his thumbs over the jut of Keith's hipbones.

Keith presses closer, marveling in the way he can press handprints into the ice on Lance's chest, can breathe in the steam of their connection and taste the moisture on his tongue. He runs his touch over Lance's shoulders, thumbs curling against Lance's collarbones, feeling decidedly pleased with himself as Lance's eyelids flutter shut with a breathless noise as Keith presses down with his thumb over the lingering bruise from kisses two nights ago, now.

He trails his fingers down Lance's sides, hums with satisfaction as he pulls Lance closer by his belt loops, pressed against each other until the flame of Keith's body lines perfectly against Lance and keeps up a steady combustion without actually burning him. Steam curls around them, soft clouds that make Keith lightheaded, like he actually is at a high altitude. Without entirely meaning to, Keith's hands drift upwards, curl over the cool of Lance's neck, a stray brush of a finger on Lance's jaw interrupting his intentions for only a heartbeat, and then he's pulling Lance down to meet him.

Steam erupts in a soft puff in Keith's mouth, and he has to tilt his head to let it escape between the corners of their parted lips, all soft movement and the slide of tongues and the heat of Lance's body just under the cooling touch of frost. Ironically, Keith is the one who melts into it, tangling his hands into Lance's hair, running the pads of his fingers over the inching ice crystals over Lance's jaw, dusting over his ears. Lance draws him into it, a gentle pressure on the back of Keith's neck to better slot their lips against each other, and his other hand pressing into the flat of Keith's back, keeping them flush together.

Keith loses himself in it, in the contentedness that accompanies Lance and the curve and splay of their bodies, age-old acquaintances with each others' weaknesses of gentle touches and soft presses of kisses. He draws Lance's bottom lip between his teeth, drinks in the moan Lance utters in response, and then releases to lick the evaporating ice from his mouth, and Lance curls more tightly around Keith in return.

It's Lance who pulls away, as the steam begins to dissipate, and Keith is left chasing the ghost touch of Lance's lips. “Babe,” Lance whispers, and for the first breath after they break the kiss, steam falls from his mouth, disappearing into the air as it cools. “We can keep going, but I need you to reel it in a bit. Or I could go again—but you look like you're doing better.”

Keith hums, feeling satisfied with the way the pulse of fire in his veins has been reduced to a dull simmer, something like a constant reminder of Red's existence. He can bear this, he knows, but he doesn't let Lance go, only calls back the flames dancing just under his skin, collects the threads one by one until they fall unevenly across his heart.

“Heh, so much for this shirt,” Lance hums, tugging the hem of Keith's clothing. Keith looks down. It's still in one piece, but all the edges are singed, just enough to frazzle the ends of the fabric.

“Damn,” Keith mutters. “I liked this shirt. Guess it's just as gay as I am now.”

Lance is startled into a spluttering bark of laughter as Keith extracts himself from Lance's arms to head back towards the truck. “I don't—what?”

“Nothing,” Keith calls back, though he can't fight the soft grin at Lance's rambunctious reaction. “It was stupid—I, um... The hems aren't straight anymore.”

“Oh my God,” Lance wheezes. “That was bad. Really bad.”

“I know,” Keith huffs, grunting as he peels his shirt off from where it sticks to his skin with sweat and water from melted ice. “I learned from the worst.”

“Hey,” Lance protests, but he huffs a laugh, poking at Keith's bare side as he leans into the truck to search for a relatively clean, and unburnt, shirt. Keith dodges sideways on instinct, and bumps his hip into the car door in attempt to get away from Lance's prying fingers.

He has siblings.

No one is ever safe from tickling, and Keith is no exception.

He was a right to be wary.

But Lance just laughs again, and rests his palm over Keith's lower back before sliding it up along his spine. The rest of him follows, and soon he's draped over the curve of Keith's back, pressing lazy kisses into Keith's shoulder blades, using his teeth to darken older marks.

“You're all wet,” Keith grumbles, trying to extract shirt from under the blankets, except that he has to use one arm to brace against his and Lance's weight so it's a losing battle with the bedding.

“Mhm,” Lance acknowledges, and noses along the junction of Keith's shoulder and neck, pressing his lips in a soft trail of butterfly kisses over heated skin.

There's a quiet moment except for the hitch in Keith's breath when Lance's tongue darts out to lap once at Keith's neck. Slowly, he leans back into Lance until they're both standing, and Lance has his head dipped into the curve of Keith's collarbone, nose pressing against his cheek as he silently begs for permission, arms still draped around Keith in a loose hold.

“Go ahead,” Keith breathes, because there's something about Lance leaving marks on him—about leaving marks on each other—that sends meaningful warmth settling through Keith's body. He's not sure if it's lingering effects from their lions, an inherent need to claim and mate as Blue and Red once did, or if it's just the need to have physical reaffirmation that they are there and alive and okay and that the nights they share aren't just some fever dream while locked in a healing pod.

But regardless, Keith lets out a soft moan of satisfied pleasure as Lance's teeth dig into his skin. The spark of pain doesn't exactly feel good, but Keith knows the outcome, takes enjoyment from the knowledge that Lance is his, and he, Lance's, and—

And it will be expressly clear to all at the Garrison just exactly what they mean to each other.

That despite everything they've both been through, they impossibly came together and _stuck_. Because this—this is real—and the raw emotion floods Keith instantly, drawing a growl from somewhere deep in his chest. And then he's turning in Lance's lazy grasp, and his fingers dig into Lance's hips as he pulls them together.

There's a heartbeat where Lance's eyes dance with mischief, as if this was all planned, but they're too bright with excitement for this to have really been intentional. Keith licks his lips, meets Lance's gaze, and then ducks his head to work his mouth over the skin of Lance's collarbone, pulling back his shirt to reveal fading bruises and bite marks that Keith fully intends to darken once again.

They get distracted for a while from the world around them, lost in the taste of each other and succumbing to grips so tight they leave fingerprints like scorch marks. Time doesn't matter as the Texas sunrise warms their skin, dries the steam from Lance's body and replaces it with a thin sheer of sweat. Summer creeps ever closer, if it hasn't already arrived, but Keith is used to the heat and Lance can cool himself at will. There are times his iced touch sends shivers across Keith's flushed skin as fingers roam and mouths clash and claim.

Somewhere between two breathless pants, as Keith sucks a new mark onto Lance's throat, Lance manages: “There's...In the truck—you should wear—the button-down.”

Keith smirks against Lance's neck, bites down and revels in the way Lance's pulse jumps under his tongue.

 

“Well I certainly wasn't expecting _this_ ,” Lance hums thoughtfully, gaze falling to the long line of cars squished on the tiny road leading to the Garrison. Keith convinced him to wear the button down instead, and he has to make a conscious effort not to stare at the delicate bruises littered across Lance's skin. “What the hell is happening?”

Keith shrugs, tapping his fingers anxiously against the steering wheel. Lance reaches below the dashboard to rummage through something at his feet, and a few moments later, Keith sees him pull out a water bottle. For a moment, the plastic crackles sharply, and Keith hears the click of ice on ice as Lance calls on Blue's power to cool the water. A chuckle rumbles through him at the absurdity of it—here they are, some sort of superhuman, famous and yet not at the same time, and Lance uses this magic for the most mundane of things.

“What?” Lance says defensively, tilting his head back to take a swig. “It's like a hundred fuckin' degrees outside. I'm not gonna drink hot water.”

Keith shakes his head incredulously, inches the truck forward as the line they're in begins a slow crawl forward for a few paces. He snags the bottle from Lance's hand, brings it to his lips to drink before Lance can steal it back.

He frowns when nothing happens.

Sneaks a glance down at the drink in his hand—frozen solid.

Next to him, Lance is giggling manically. “The—the look... on your face,” he gasps out.

“Asshole,” Keith grits out, and fits his mouth over the bottle to breathe heat onto the water, at least enough to melt some to drink. This isn't the first time Lance has done this, and Keith's learned in the past he has to be careful about how he defrosts frozen water bottles because more often than not he just burns through the plastic. He tilts his head back, lets the water trickle down his throat, and then splutters, coughing, when the car behind him honks and he startles.

“Damn,” Lance huffs, as Keith sets the bottle on the console and glares into the rearview mirror, pulling forward a whopping two car spaces or so.

“Do we have another water?” Keith asks, and the line creeps forward at a snail's pace.

“Yeah, in the back,” Lance says, peering around the seat. “Want me to grab one?”

“Please.”

Lance reaches for the door handle, with the intent to hop out of the truck and snag a water bottle while they're stopped in the traffic, but, inevitably, it's exactly then that the line starts moving quicker. Lance huffs, and then starts crawling out of his seat and squeezing in between the space over the console to reach behind Keith's seat.

It's a solid half second before he's completely turned around and waving his ass in Keith's face, bumping his temple with his hip.

“Oh my God,” Keith groans, but his cheeks hurt from grinning. He turns away and hits blindly with the back of his hand at Lance's body, and his knuckles connect soundly against Lance's butt.

“Hey, take me to dinner first,” Lance teases, voice slightly muffled by the seat between them, and Keith finds himself laughing freely, despite the situation they're in, despite the twisting of his gut because they're _here_.

“Here,” Lance says, drawing back and passing Keith a bottle.

Lance settles down in his seat with a soft thud, just in time for someone to rap their knuckles against the passenger window and scare the living shit out of him. He lets out a high pitched squeak, and Keith swallows his laughter as he rolls down the window.

“Invitation?” says the man outside, completely dressed in Garrison uniform.

“I'm sorry?” Keith says, willing himself to ignore the way Lance endearingly pats at his chest in an attempt to quell the rapid thrum of his heart, startled into panic.

“We require invitations in order to enter the ceremony. You should have received one from your attending family member.”

“What,” Keith deadpans. “I—what?”

“Are you not here for the graduation ceremony?”

“Oh,” Lance breathes, and his gaze flicks over to meet Keith's for a moment. Shit, that's why it's so damn packed. Well, they're already here, he supposes.

“We're former students,” Keith explains. “We'd like to speak with Iverson.”

“I'll need to see proof of your attendance, then. Class rings will do.”

“I—um...” Lance manages.

“We didn't graduate,” Keith says, keeping his voice firm.

“I'm sorry, I can't—”

Suddenly there's a squawk of indignation from somewhere down the line of cars, and the Garrison worker turns sharply with an instinctual salute. “Harper! What do you think you're doing? Do you know who these two are?”

“Mr. Holt, Sir—I'm sorry, I was instructed to receive invitations from the waiting visitors.”

“Holt?” Lance echoes, and Keith leans towards him to get a better view of the frazzled character stalking briskly towards their car. Someone from the car in front of them sticks their head out the window to watch the scene, while the car behind them honks. Again. Keith contemplates tossing a middle finger out his side window, but eventually decides against it as Pidge's father comes up to Lance's window.

His hair is thinner, eyes duller with age than when they last saw him, but he's healthy at least, as he leans his elbow into the open window and greets them with an easy smile after shooing the other Garrison man away. “Well, I'm glad to see you two. It's nice to know I'm not the only speaker for the ceremony.”

“What? We're not—” Lance starts, and Sam Holt cuts him off.

“Nonsense. I'm sure they'll let you in. Unless—are you two receiving diplomas?”

“No,” Keith spits, far more vehement than he intends, but the thought of walking the stage makes him feel sick. He schools himself into a more mild response. “No, we just came to visit. We didn't realize it was graduation.”

“Yeah,” Lance confirms. “Just wanted to... Check things out, I guess.”

“Well, make no mistake, today is definitely the day to see the Garrison in top performance. Here.” Sam Holt draws something from a breast pocket and holds it out to Lance. “My keycard. Tell them I'm vouching for you and to let you in, and you should be able to get around most of the facilities with that if you'd like to tour a bit. You can return it to me in my office later, after the ceremony.”

“...Thanks,” Lance says, but the response sounds a little choked. He takes the keycard with gently shaking fingertips. It makes Keith realize how tightly he's gripping the steering wheel, and he forces himself to relax a bit. “Means a lot to us.”

Sam Holt gives them a soft, broken smile. “Matt and I wouldn't be here without you guys. It's the least I can do.”

He doesn't mention Pidge.

Doesn't mention his daughter.

As far as he's concerned, she's dead.

Keith swallows the sudden lump in his throat. He gives Sam Holt a careful nod, and turns towards the road before him, now empty except for a single car waiting before the check-in box. Lance echoes his thanks again, and then the two of them are left alone, the soft thud of Garrison boots echoing into the distance as Keith reminds himself that the world has changed.

“Ready?” he grits out, and his knuckles burn with the force he's putting behind his grip on the steering wheel.

Lance takes a deep breath, tightens his trembling hold on the keycard in his lap. “Yeah. Let's do this.”

 

The halls are empty, as expected when everyone is gathering on the field outside for the graduation ceremony, families and dear friends all lingering around plastic chairs in front of a makeshift stage. Lance and Keith had seen the congregation in the distance, and decided it better to avoid the masses in favor of garnering nostalgia from the classrooms they once sat in, tapping idly away with a pencil or doodling in the margins of notebooks.

As they wander, a little aimlessly, they realize they're wrong to assume that the classrooms are also free to enter. They hear the voices of stern lecturers, spewing on about thrusters and fluid mechanics, or the more gentle but cold tones of medic instructors, precise in their detailed description of the human heart. Of course—graduation is always a few days before classes officially end. The seniors at the Garrison are allowed some quiet moments to collect themselves before they are thrown out into the world to fight for their own.

Keith and Lance never got that privilege, before they were plunged into the vast.

Occasionally, they glance in the windows cut into doors and peer into classrooms, watching as bright-eyed overeager students fight against the looming excitement of summer. They're carefree and wild, in a way Lance and Keith had once been, and Keith feels the distinctive weight of sentimentality settle on him. How different would his world be if he had just been able to hold his tongue? If he hadn't gotten kicked out? If he'd stayed and grown with the ignorance of what was really out there?

He never would have found Shiro.

The universe would be in ruins under Zarkon's rule.

He never would have fallen in love with Lance.

Keith reaches out, curls his fingers between Lance's, tight enough to keep him grounded to the present and not the terrifying hypotheticals.

“I don't know what I'm looking for,” Lance whispers to him, as they both stare, slightly unfocused, into a general classroom.

The instructor is vaguely familiar, and when he turns from the board to the class—there, one eye is squeezed shut, and Keith realizes he really should have recognized that jaw, even if the beard is gone. “Iverson,” Keith says, in an equally hushed tone.

“Okay, I might be lost in life but I really don't think—oh, you're right. It is him. Jesus, did he always have a double chin?”

“It's been—what—five years?”

“Didn't he used to have a beard?”

“Yeah.”

“That's why. God, I really didn't miss his ugly mug.”

“ _Lance_.”

“Oh fuck,” Lance breathes. “I think we got spotted. Quick—stop, drop, and roll.”

“That's for fires, you moron,” Keith mutters, and turns to glance in the window. A few students in the front row of desks are excitedly chattering amongst each other and—yup, that's Iverson walking over to greet them. Or tell them off. Keith's not sure what he would prefer.

“Well, aren't you two a sight for sore eye!” Iverson cheers, as if they've been gone for a year, old favored students returning to a dear mentor.

As if they're friends.

Keith resists the urge to run.

Lance, beside him, looks a little stricken, but manages too cool his expression into something a little less venomous than how Keith feels. “Yes, Sir—we, um...”

“Come in, come in!” he ushers Keith and Lance into the room before they even have a chance to protest. “I was just explaining to these _cadets—_ ” He spits the word like it's an insult. “—About detailed flight maneuvers. Perhaps you two could give them some pointers?”

The way Iverson's voice goes from patronizing to saccharine makes Keith's blood heat. He feels fire curl under his skin—has to make a conscious effort to draw it back. Lance's fingertips brush against the inside of his wrist, and Keith glances over, draws comfort from the easy smile Lance puts on, if a little awkward. His gaze is tired, weary, but there's still soft spark of light, because maybe, maybe, this is what Lance needs, to see that the world goes on without them. To see what they've managed to save, and no matter how brutal it is, the fact that things continue on as normal might bring some comfort to those who have held the fate of the universe in their clasped hands.

Lance clears his throat softly. “Well, I hate to break it to you guys, but I'm not sure how up-to-date my knowledge is. The only ship I've really flown recently was a giant lion.”

Someone from the back of the room snorts, intentionally loud in their indignation.

Keith bristles instantly, but the sound of his growl is drowned by the commotion at the front of the room.

“Really, Lauren?” calls one of the students from the front row.

“You're not serious,” Lauren retorts. “You don't believe this bullshit, do you? About 'Voltron' and the 'Paladins' and saving the universe?”

“Your ass would be dead right now if it wasn't for them!”

“ _Cadets_ ,” Iverson growls.

“Sir, you're not telling me you're one of the fanboys, too?” Lauren snarks, and laughs. “Ridiculous.”

“You've gone soft,” Lance says to Iverson, voice easy, but Keith hears the strain lingering just underneath. “If I had talked back to you, you would have kicked me out of the room.”

“That's because it was easier to do that than watch you wreck yourself in the simulator,” Iverson returns with a grin, as if they're fond memories.

Keith feels Lance go cold next to him, quite literally. The air turns icy around him, prickling against Keith's skin, as Lance instinctively reacts. Despite this, he returns the smile with a soft laugh, but there's no mirth in his eyes, just wounded pride.

“I'll have you know, Cadets,” Iverson announces. “That these two were some of my best students before they went off to save the world. You owe them your respect.”

It's the blatant lie that makes Keith snap—not on his behalf, but Lance's. He might not have been there for all the times that Iverson dragged Lance through the mud, but he sees the lasting effects: the way Keith has spent years building Lance's confidence up, the still-there nightmares that aren't ungrounded fears, the way the air prickles with tension next to him, and Keith decides he needs to end this before he has to thaw Lance out.

“ _Bullshit_ ,” he spits, whirling. He ignores the chorus of shocked gasps from the students, in favor of snarling in Iverson's face. “Best students? You kicked me out, and then held it over Lance's head for the entire time he was fighter class. Don't try to play it off like we got along so well, just because we made something of ourselves. Don't try to take credit. We aren't who we are today because of you, it's _despite_ you. The things you've done...”

“Keith,” Lance warns. “You're smoking. And you already ruined one shirt today.”

“Let it burn,” Keith growls, low and poisonous. “Maybe then this asshole will remember that it's better _not to piss me off_.”

“I didn't mean to upset you—” Iverson takes a step back, but Keith follows.

A devil's grin. An echo of a memory: _you fight like a Galra_. A dark coil of anger simmering low in Keith's gut. A job unfinished. “Should I take the other one, too?”

Iverson swallows hard, and his one-eyed gaze goes a mix of coldly furious and terrified at the same time. Because that's what got Keith kicked out—it hadn't been intentional, but he was always impulsive, and Iverson was in the wrong place at the wrong time to rub Keith the wrong way. There was more to the story than that, pieces that Keith has never told Lance and probably never will, memories that he refuses to relive, but there's a hatred in Iverson's gaze that Keith takes distinct pleasure in.

Just in the same way he took his eye, all that time ago.

“Keith,” Lance snaps.

“They owe us,” Keith says mildly. “They owe us for what they did to us.”

He raises his hand, lets flames dance between spread fingers like spiderwebs of heat.

“Holy motherfucking shit,” whispers one of the cadets. Probably Lauren. The one who didn't think any of this was real.

Keith still can't believe it. It all feels hazy, surreal.

He watches as Iverson's gaze flickers from Keith's face to his hand, ever drawing closer.

“How much would I have to burn before you go blind?”

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance growls, harsh and insistent, and then Keith yelps as his hand goes cold, too cold.

He stumbles away, clutching at the hand now surrounded in a block of ice, hissing against the pain of the freeze. “Fuck—Lance—”

“This isn't what we came here for,” Lance says, and now his voice is quiet. His eyes, deep as the ocean, hold far too many scenes of past pain, far too many times he saw friends do terrible, terrible things. Far too many times he's done terrible, terrible things himself.

Keith's heart breaks a little. He manages a broken curse, before he channels heat into his hand, leaving a small puddle on the floor where the ice melts, and then he bolts from the room, chest aching with emotion.

Lance follows him out, down the hallway, and allows himself half a heartbeat to take in the way Keith presses himself against the far wall, unsure of how to feel—fear? Regret? Anger? It all melds together into confusion, a slight emptiness in his ribcage, and a distinct knowledge that he _doesn't belong here_.

“I don't know what happened,” Lance says softly, voice an exhale of a sigh as he draws closer. His hand comes up to brush along Keith's cheek, to sooth the way his skin crawls with an unresolved past. “But I don't care.”

Keith takes a deep breath and tries to steady himself. He flattens his palms against the wall behind him, pressing until his muscles burn from the force of staying perfectly still, and then he relaxes against it completely—lets the fight drain from him in the same mental exercise he's perfected over the years. Lance watches him with a careful gaze, and doesn't startle when Keith suddenly reaches up to clutch at the hand caressing his face.

“I'm sorry,” Keith breathes. “I ruined this for you. You wanted to come back for something—and—”

“No, I wanted to come back because... Well, I don't entirely know. But I know whatever I'm looking for isn't here. It never was. And it's not out in space either. Because I keep thinking there's something missing, and I don't know how to cope with the worlds we left behind.”

Lance leans forward, resting his forehead against Keith's. He closes his eyes as if the weight of keeping them open is too much, and breathes deep. “It sucked. It sucked to all hell, but I miss being seventeen. Because then all I had to worry about was keeping my shit together enough that Iverson didn't boot me out, too. And I could deal with always being compared to you, and the world was... so much simpler.”

“I know,” Keith responds, feels his breath fan out across their faces, heated by the dragon's fire in his core. “I know. We're lost Lance. We're lost without the team.”

“Not... Not lost,” Lance says. “Just wandering.” He opens his eyes, a broken glass window to his soul, where the waves crash against the beach of a heart filled with longing—for family, for Blue, for what could have been if things were just a bit different—and fear—for family, for Blue, for what _could have been_ , and all they narrowly avoided.

“Let's do it,” Lance says, a carefully fond smile on his face.

“Do what?”

“Let's wander. Let's go somewhere. Anywhere. Anywhere but this God-awful place.”

Lance licks his lips, once, and then suddenly his eyes have gone from fragile and torn to bright and filled with promise. “Keith.” His voice is deadly serious, body humming with quiet excitement. “Keith, marry me.”

There's a stunned moment where Keith is silent, lips parted in surprise, because of all fucking places for Lance to propose—but he already knows the answer. As if he could deny Lance anything. It's why they're here in the first place, Keith's weakness that is this boy that smells like ocean breeze and loves his family and misses his lion so much that Keith feels an ache bloom in his own body for Red.

As if he could imagine falling in love with anyone else. No one—no one understands, and that's something that has been made expressly clear to Keith on this trip. If the world knew what he and Lance went through... If the world was Lance—but then who needs the world when he has sunshine and untamed magic contained in tanned skin that bruises so beautifully under Keith's lips.

And part of Keith knows that Lance doesn't need an answer because he can read it in the swell of affection in Keith's gaze, can feel it in the way his skin warms under the fingertips still resting on his cheek, can tell by the way Keith leans just a bit closer with his entire being. Except, if he doesn't answer, Lance will never let him live it down because somehow they'll end up getting married without Keith ever officially agreeing to it, and Lance loves finding loopholes in things that don't even need loopholes to be found in them.

So he utters the word like a prayer, lets it fall from his lips with a breath of smoke as some control over his power is lost in the moment.

“ _Yes_ , yes. _Fuck_ , Lance,” Keith breathes, and then is dragging Lance down, because he can't bear another second without kissing him. Maybe when he steals Lance's breath away, Lance might understand what it feels like to have stolen Keith's heart.

“This,” Lance gasps between kisses. “ _This_.”

“I... know,” Keith pants back, curling his fingers through Lance's hair, holding him tight because he's never letting go. “I know.”

Because Lance is right—this, this is what they're missing. It seems so insignificant in comparison to the worlds they've seen. Surely their relationship goes beyond that of just boyfriends, so would a scrap of paper or a couple of rings really make the difference? Except it's these little details, these little Earth traditions that they both cling to because if they don't everything seems so blown out of proportion and there's times they feel like they're going insane... It's these scraps of meaning that somehow mean _everything_.

Because they've been searching, really, in their hearts, for who they are and who they want to be. They're shells, left broken and empty after Voltron, with a shattered team—family—for which the universe had no mercy. And it's not exactly that they found themselves in each other, but rather they're finding themselves _together_.

And this, this is another piece of the puzzle, another thing to build them back up to feeling _human_ again.

Lance breaks away, breathless, throws his head back, and laughs. There are tears streaming down his cheeks, and it makes Keith realize that he's crying too, so overwhelmed with everything that there's no where else for the feelings to go, except escaping in the form of soft droplets of the ocean from the corner of their eyes.

Keith gasps for a breath, finds himself laughing alongside Lance, clutching at each other, holding on to the world in their arms.

Lance pulls back, still chuckling, like he can't contain the joy, and Keith relates. He digs through his pocket and pulls out the keycard, and drops it on the floor. “They'll find it,” he whispers, in way of explanation. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“Where are we going?” Keith asks, as Lance grabs his hand and leads him through hallways they both have burned into their minds, but maybe now will be remembered in a slightly lighter tone than before. They've turned empty aspirations and childhood innocence into wisdom and memory and _love_.

“Anywhere,” Lance answers, as they emerge into the Texas sun. “Anywhere we want. We'll just drive.”

“Perfect.”

In the distance, Keith can faintly hear the last verses of a speech from the graduation ceremony:

“ _In the words of famous Garrison pilot Takashi Shirogane, 'The world has taught me far more than I ever deserved to know,' and I, for one, agree. To stand here and speak is humbling. But I think what's even more important about the Garrison can be summed up by the words spoken by the Black Paladin of Voltron the when he returned to Earth. He said: 'We've been through the toughest things anyone could ever experience, but against all odds, I have found a family...'_ ”

Keith laughs, a little bitterly, as the worlds fade into the distance. They're all so broken, but it's true. Lance glances over his shoulder at him, an eyebrow quirked in question.

“Let's go find Hunk,” Keith blurts. “Or Shiro. Or call Katie and Matt. Something. I don't care. Find out where the hell Coran got off to. Let's go visit them. All of them. Meet up again.”

Lance chuckles. “Slow down, there. We have to get back to the car first, and maybe a hotel because I need a shower.”

Keith snorts. “Yeah, you do.”

“Asshole.”

“ _Fiance_ ,” Keith corrects.

“Why do you want to visit everyone?”

“I miss my family.”

Lance sends him a fond smile. “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

“So?”

“Yeah. Let's do it. All of us. Together again. Besides, everyone has to get together to come to the wedding.”

“Exactly,” Keith hums sagely, and then bursts into incredulous laughter because how the hell did he end up here in life.

He's marrying Lance. Somehow, impossibly, he's learning how to feel normal again. He's going to soak up as many of Hunk's hugs as he can while they're together. He's gonna ruffle Katie's hair and she'll try to bite his hand off, because even though it's not Pidge, there are some things that have remained the same, and she's still like a sister to Keith. Matt will look on and laugh at the exchange. They'll work things out with Shiro, maybe bring him back from wherever he hides in isolation, cutting out the world in an attempt to cope. Somewhere out there is Coran, in all his eccentricity.

God, _he's marrying Lance_.

The thought sends a giddy rush through Keith as he hops into the driver's seat of the truck, and Lance climbs in on the other side, all long-limbs and affectionate smiles.

Keith catches himself staring, but can't bring himself to look away, as Lance's skin turns golden in the sunlight, his smile brighter than it's been in months now that this is off their chests. The splay of his body is seamless, a curve of lean muscle and marked skin that Keith knows is _his_.

Slowly, Keith starts the engine.

The moment lingers.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A few things:
> 
> 1\. Something happened to the lions when they were no longer needed. They're gone. Feel free to come up with your own theories.
> 
> 2\. Iverson is not a good guy. Read into the scenes as you will, but it was a scenario in which Keith found more than he should have, but neither of them could speak out about it, so instead of arresting Keith, Iverson was forced to expel him.
> 
> Now goddamn I finally got this fic out of my system. *quiet screeching*


End file.
